CXL Minidegree: Conversion Optimization Part [3/12]

Introduction

Words help us sell. The only goal of sales copy is to get users to take action.

The Process of Writing Great Copy

Research Customer, product and competition

Outline and guideposts

Draft Copy

Conversion boost

Revise, rearrange

Test

1. Research

To produce compelling copy, you need to know;

• why people are buying the product, to begin with
• how the but the product
• what they use the product for
• what matters to them — what is the real problem that they are trying to solve.

Know Your Competition

You should look at what the competition is doing.

How are they presenting to your customers? Or, in better words, how are they selling?

To defeat the enemy, you must know the enemy.

Once you figure out your competition, you can determine the best way to differentiate yourself.

Get Out of the Office

To know your customer, you have to meet your customer. Sitting in the office is not going to help you better solve your customer’s problem.

Focus on the things that could impact the usability of the product

Peep Provides an outline for this below.

do they think your solution can solve their problem?

Who are you? What do you do? (customer profile)

What does our product help you do? (enables you to understand how they use it, tells you words they use to describe our product)

Which parameters did you compare on different options? (which features matter)

What were the most important ones? (critical pains to solve)

Which alternatives did you consider? (competitors we have to look at)

What made you choose our product? (our key advantage)

What were the biggest hesitations and doubts before the purchase? (things we have to address in the copy)

Were there questions you needed answers to but couldn’t find any? (necessary information to provide)

What information would have helped you make the decision faster? (same as above)

In which words would you recommend it to somebody, you know? (words they use to describe our product)

2. Outline And Guideposts

Congratulations on completing step one. It is now time to write your outline.

Note: Guideposts are the markers that help you write the content.

Writing the outline should only take you a few minutes.

The outline structure will depend on the page you’re writing the copy for.

Peep has generously shared his favourite copy templates below.

Home Page Copy

Every business is different, and your home page should be a reflection or, better yet, a celebration of these differences. To make your value easy to understand, Peep suggests that you follow this formula.

Headline

What is your main-benefit? The product or customer should be mentioned here. This will be your attention grabber.

Sub-headline or a two to three sentence paragraph

This is a short paragraph explaining what you do or offer to the customer and why it’s useful.

Bullet points

List the key benefits or features

Product Page Copy Outline

This is where you sell the product’s value and where the user should be prompted to take action — add to cart, sign up etc.

Name of the product.

Value proposition: what’s the end-benefit of this product, and who is it for?

Specific and straightforward overview of what the product does and why it is that good (features and benefits).

What’s the pain that it solves? Description of the problem.

List of everything in the product (e.g. curriculum of the course, list of every item in the package, etc.).

Technical information: parameters, what do you get and how does it work?

Objection handling. Make a list of all possible FUDs (fears, uncertainties, doubts) and address them.

Bonuses (what you get on top of the offer).

Money-back guarantee (+ return policy).

Price.

Call to action.

Expectation setting: what happens after you buy

3. Draft Copy

Fill in the framework above and edit to fit your tone and messaging.

Avoid Jargon

Use the most straightforward language possible.

Avoid common buzzwords like the plague.

Avoid superlatives and hype. Saying that you’re the “Best” or “Secrets that will make you rich. held inside” makes you lose credibility.

Be Specific

“Clearer and more specific subject lines convert better.”

— Bob Kemper, Senior Director of Sciences, MECLABS.

Being specific makes you sound more believable.

However, you can use superlative if you back it up.

Here’s a good example from square.

Specific headline. A typical call to action with a particular explanation of what they get when they sign up. Specific benefits are listed — specific images to show the product in action.

It has to be about them.

Every word you have on the site needs to reflect on how you will solve the customers’ problem.

They do not care about you. And even if they do, they only care how you affect themselves.

How much information should I provide?

Tests have shown that 79% of people skim. But 16% read everything.

Your target needs to be that 16% of people. They are the ones that are going to be the most interested. Peep encourages that if these people are interested in will not matter how long or short your copy is — you need to give them as much information as possible.

Your copy is your sales staff. You need to provide as much information as possible to

All at Once or Make Them Click?

It’s okay to have information on different pages. Long-form copy works excellent, but it’s not a requirement to post off that information in the same place.

You should avoid making the users do any work. If there is important information that you want the user to know, then you need to make sure that the user doesn’t have to do anything to see it.

When, Where and If at All Should I Show the Price?

Publishing the price will not push users away if you don’t have a price, make sure people can get a quote instead.

However, non-negotiable. You need to communicate the value before you communicate the price.

4. Conversion Boost

Peep says that there are a few things that we can do to improve our conversion rate

• Optimize for clarity — it’s plainly obvious what you sell, why that is good and who it’s for
• Persuasion boost — apply a persuasion technique that uses to your particular context
• Optimize for information — no question unanswered

5. Revise and Rearrange

Once you have your copy ready to go. You should track it to see how it performs. Before every test, you should get the opinion of 2–3 people.

Your target — Is it more clear to them that your offer will help solve their problem?

Peers — Are you doing everything that you can do to explain how to solve their problems?

6. Test

You can’t accurately determine the future, which is why the last step is to test. Conversion optimization is a process, and to produce the most optimized version, and you need to validate your hypotheses.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed the material this week. I found it to be thoughtfully l laid out. The Lecture structure has contributed to my comprehension of the topics. There is lots of information that is excluded in my above post. This session of the mini-degree, but the content in these courses are comprehensive, and after I finish, I know that I’ll be able to apply these concepts in real life. I give this section a 4.2/5.

See you next week!